Tiny Dancer, play it one more time.

The Grand Island Central Catholic Lady Crusader Dance team won Class C1 State Championships in Jazz and Pom categories last weekend at the State Cheer and Dance Championships in Grand Island. The girls (L-R); Maeli Mehring, Evie Peterson, Reese Reilly, Cutler Obermiller-Snyder and Ellie Connick.

Let me bring you out one more time, Ladies. Play it again Sam, just one last time.

I’ve replayed the video every single day since Saturday. It was so inspiring. It even brought me to tears.

Such an emotional piece that Tiny Dancer. Never saw or heard a Dance routine like it before. Accompanied by the grace and flow of five high school girls and driven by a head Dance Coach that demands near perfection, the piece was transformed into a stunning performance that brought the house down.

It was a thing of beauty Saturday at the State Cheer and Dance Championships, a splendid event staged every year by the Nebraska Coaches Association, the past several years being held at Grand Island’s Heartland Events Center.

The all-female quintet that electrified the Events Center last Saturday was one of 228 teams that competed during a grueling three-day stretch.

That school, Grand Island Central Catholic, has a reputation known throughout the state for winning State Championships in Dance competition.

These State Cheer and Dance Championships have records stretching back to 2008, when the NCA began staging the event.

Since that year, Class C-1 GICC has won twenty-three state championships, the majority coming the past 12 years in Jazz, Hip Hop and Pom categories, although the Lady Crusader Dance team has not competed in Hip Hop since 2020.

This past weekend when two of the three days were devoted to Dance squads, schools came from the far reaches of the state, from Falls City to Chadron, from Omaha to Scottsbluff, from Wynot to Creek Valley, Grand Island Central Catholic added State Championships number 22 and number 23 under the excellent direction of Head Coach Erin Martinez.

That puts the Grand Island Central Catholic Crusader Dance Team in rare air, trailing only mighty Millard North, who has not only captured 31 Nebraska Dance Championships, but have taken home more than one National Championship.

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Erin Martinez, wife of GICC boys head basketball coach Tino Martinez, took over the program four years ago from Nicole Hicken and Erin Neuhaus. Martinez, a Cheerleader/turned Dancer at a Class A school back in the day, has always been an aficionado of Collegiate Dance competition, hitting the ground running when she took the reins at Central Catholic in 2021.

Erin Martinez, already one of the best in the business, has taken her teams to State eight times, coming away with seven Championships and a Runner-up in Jazz, just 20 hundredths of a point away from being 8 for 8 during her career.

She lives and coaches by a tough set of rules for her teams. Dance is tough and Erin knows it takes hours of hard work to fashion a pair of performances worthy of winning a state championship.

And winning? It’s brutal. There is no black and white like volleyball, softball, basketball.

In Dance, you don’t either just win or lose. It’s much more difficult than that.

The performances are judged by national judges who travel around the country doing just that. They expect perfection and give no slack. They are used to seeing Winners and those who take home the Gold are just that.

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This year was not a normal year for the GICC Dance Team. The 2023/2024 Lady Crusader Dance Team consisted of just five girls. Two were freshmen.

Erin worked with the wonderful Michelle McNamara, who put together a strong Middle School Dance program.

McNamara’s JH program contributed current GICC Dance Team members Cutler Obermiller-Snyder (Sophomore) and Freshmen Ellie Connick and Maeli Mehring. Junior Co-Captain Evie Peterson and the veteran of the team, Senior Captain Reese Reilly rounded the small, but strong unit.

Erin Martinez put it best when describing the Dance Team’s journey to the State Cheer and Dance Championships.

“Preparation all summer with a four day camp. Three different routines at each home football game and halftime routines for each basketball game, all while preparing competition routines for the Nebraska State Cheer & Dance Championships….and all at 6am”

That’s right, 10 months…40 weeks…98 practices. ALL at 6 in the morning because the Winter sports teams have first dibs on gym space.

It all paid off handsomely Saturday at the Events Center. I knew the routines well, being GICC’s PA announcer for basketball games.

It was always an honor to bring them out to the court at halftime.

Every performance brought the house down whether it was the highly charged Pom routine or the heart-capturing Dance routine, Tiny Dancer.

The GICC girls were brought on to the floor early Saturday, having to compete at 8:12 am. Tiny Dancer brought the crowd to a hush, followed by a resounding round of well-earned applause.

Some in the audience were applauding, some like me were wiping the tears away from the touching performance.

This man rarely is brought to tears, not even at my mother or father’s funerals. It’s a showbiz (PA) thing you know. Keep your composure.

But I did not Saturday. I broke down.

Erin Martinez’ girls had an hour and forty minutes to completely change gears and explode with a high-powered Pom routine.

They pulled it off.

By the time the clock struck One O’Clock on Saturday, Erin’s Lady Crusader Dance team was a Double Champion.

Dancing’s Fab Five, Reese Reilly, Evie Peterson, Cutler Obermiller-Snyder, Ellie Connick and Maeli Mehring had emptied the tank and taken home the hardware times two.

They were the Queens of C1 Dance, the most competitive class below Class A.

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A few years back, I recall Erin Martinez telling me that once State Dance was in the books, so were the routines used performed there. They never did them again.

Can’t say that I blame them. There’s nothing left to win. They are the State Champions.

But……I can dream, can’t I?

Let me bring you out one more time, Ladies. Play it again Sam, just one last time.

“.And now for your halftime entertainment, the multiple state championship winning 2023/2024 Lady Crusader Dance Team performing a Jazz Routine to TINY DANCER, choreographed by No Limits.”

I promise to try and hold back the tears.